Maine’s Own Organic Milk Co., or MOOMilk, has partnered with Wayside Food Programs of Portland to supply fresh organic milk to the food pantries, shelters, soup kitchens and other institutions Wayside serves.

MOOMilk’s goal is to create and maintain a market that allows Maine family organic dairy farms to prosper, thus keeping their land in agricultural production.

Under the program, people and organizations will be able to purchase milk directly from MOOMilk at below retail prices. The milk will be delivered directly to the Oakhurst Dairy warehouse in Portland, where it will be picked up by Wayside and distributed throughout southern Maine. Oakhurst is the primary distributor of MOOMilk in Maine and New Hampshire.

. On those sites, donors can buy as little as two half-gallons of milk at a time or as much as a full pallet, which holds 486 half-gallon cartons. Discounts from the retail price will be from 6 percent to 25 percent, depending on the amount purchased at any one time.

The buyers will receive a receipt for the purchase from MOOMilk and an acknowledgement of the donation from Wayside. Since Wayside is a 501(c)3 organization, donations of food to it are tax-deductible, and those who itemize their deductions on their federal income taxes can use the paperwork to claim those deductions.